Tips, Titles and Tools for Teachers
Resources for the 6 Traits and Writing Workshop
Models of Excellence has images of Austin's butterfly that you can download. (Look on the right hand side of page.) If you read this article, you will find the information about the task, as well as great ideas for how you can use Austin's butterfly with students! Here is the link to the video that Jennifer shared with us: Austin's Butterfly: Building Excellence in Student Work - Models, Critique and Descriptive Feedback. If you would like to explore how to use these images with your students, let me know!
Happy Reading!
Epic - Free Books!
Importance of Anchor Charts
You may find some ideas for writing anchor charts in this post - 25 Awesome Anchor Charts for Teaching Writing. My favorites were the charts for The Why Behind Writers' Workshop, Setting Goals, and Power Up Student Sentences.
Mentor Texts
Book Recommendations for Word Choice
Book Recommendations for Sentence Fluency
Book Recommendations for Conventions
Great Mentor Text for Goal Setting
A great new addition to the index card process is asking students to identify a learning goal in math that they want to meet by this winter when they retake the NWEA. To do this, Brynn made an anchor chart with the four categories in the math NWEA (geometry, algebraic thinking and operations, numbers and operations, and measurement and data). She created a menu of four to six goal options in each category. She selected goals that align with NWEA, Educate, Everyday Math and Common Core. Students looked at their NWEA report to find which category needed improvement, which was colored yellow. From there, they looked at the chart to find a goal in that category. We found the second graders to be engaged in the process and able to select a "just right" goal!
For the upper elementary teachers who have used the NWEA index cards in the past, having student write a learning target on the back may be a great way to do some individual goal setting! Let me know if you would like more information about this process (since it's easier to explain in person!) or if you would like me to help you work with your class on goal setting. Thank you to Amanda Levesque for sharing this great mentor text with me! (This book is probably a good fit for grades 2-5. See below for book recommendations for K-5.)
New Mentor Texts for Introducing Growth Mindset
Shelly Moody
Atwood Primary School
Williams Elementary School
Email: smoody@rsu18.org
Twitter: @shelmoody